A 15-year NBA veteran as a player, Bill Cartwright joined the New Jersey Nets as an assistant coach prior to the 2004-05 season after serving as the head coach of the Chicago Bulls for parts of three seasons (12/28/01 - 11/24/03).

Most well-known as the starting center during the Bulls' first three championship runs in the early 1990s, Cartwright was kind enough to speak with us before Minnesota played New Jersey on Sunday evening.

MT: After spending eight years in New York, you were traded to the Chicago Bulls, where you were known as "Teach" for your ability to pass along knowledge of the game to teammates. Did you plan on becoming a coach as you are now?
Cartwright: Well, it’s not something that I intended to do. I had a lot of other things that I wanted to investigate. After I got done playing one year with the Sonics (after his Bulls run) I had narrowed down some of the things I wanted to do. One of them was to be a McDonalds operator, along with day care insurance and some other ideas that I had. So I was focusing on that, playing golf, coaching my kids playing basketball, and it was a great year. I’ve never been busier. But somewhere during the course of the year I got a phone call from Jerry Krause, who is the GM of the Bulls, and he asked me if I wanted to be an assistant coach (under Phil Jackson). Now, that wasn’t something that I wanted to do or was thinking about doing at the time, because I was having fun doing what I was doing. But I was coaching a lot of basketball, with my kids especially, and I felt like maybe that's what I should be doing.

MT: 15 years in the NBA gave you a lot of time to think about what you wanted to do after retirement and it sounds like that’s what you did in that first year.
Cartwright: Yeah, I had some time to kind of investigate it and kind of see how I felt and I felt like that’s what I was kind of guided to do.

MT: How would you assess being an assistant coach in the league?
Cartwright: As an assistant coach, everybody is different, so you bring a different perspective. With certain areas, you feel like you know better, but I think I know all the areas (laughs).

MT: Fair enough. Is working with the Nets young big guys like Sean Williams and Josh Boone a particular focus?
Cartwright: Being a big guy it’s kind of a natural gravitation to that, but we’re the kind of staff where if we see anything, it doesn’t matter who says something.

MT: And like you said, you’ve seen just about everything in your basketball career.
Cartwright: I haven't had a problem with that, yeah, to see something or identify something. A big part of what assistants do is to make sure that players get work, and that they’re improving. The head coach can’t do everything. We also do prep work for the games, and many other things. The coaching staff is a team just like the players are a team.

MT: You were a 53 percent shooter in your career. Can you address the general decline in perimeter shooting as the game's gotten more athletic?
Cartwright: I think shooting is like hitting: either you can or you can’t. Certainly you can get better, but I think there are exceptional shooters; just like in golf, there are exceptional ball strikers. Some guys have a knack for it; some guys have to work their butts off. Those guys who are exceptional shooters, you know them. That’s a big part of what we do.

MT: Having been around Jason Kidd for a few years now, can you talk about how different a team is run compared to one with Michael Jordan.
Cartwright: You’re talking about two different positions. Jordan is a scorer and Kidd is a ball distributor. It’s however you slice it. When I was in Chicago we played out of a two-guard front, so we didn’t have a point guard, traditionally. With Jason, if he’s the primary point guard you want to play to your strengths and get the ball to this guy so that he can be a distributor and do what he does well. With Michael you want to get him the ball so that he can score. So obviously you don’t want him bringing it up to pass, he didn’t want to pass anyway.

MT: Right. Now, can you talk about that adjustment period between when you became a Bull in 1988 until you won your first title two years afterwards.
Cartwright: It took about two years. We were all coming together as a team. I got there in 1988 and that was the first year that Scottie Pippen and Horace (Grant) started. (John) Paxson had just come over and he was getting himself acclimated, and Doug Collins was the coach. It was kind of an introductory year and that happened to be the year that another team was pretty good, the Detroit Pistons. We had some definite battles with them, as we did with New York and Cleveland. It was a good time where our team basically was trying to establish ourselves and figure out who we were. That first year I remember it took about half the year to really start playing good basketball; we were really struggling to play. Then coming back the next year with Phil (Jackson) it took about half the year for us to really start playing well.

MT: What was your role in those Pistons series, marked by some aggressive if not cheap play by guys like Bill Laimbeer?
Cartwright: My role was to give a physical presence and be aggressive. Give some scoring, play some defense and just do what I had done my entire career. It worked out well for me, because the Knicks at that point in time were in transition, because Patrick (Ewing) had just come over there. That year (1987) I didn’t play half the season, so a lot of times it would be me and Rick Carlisle working out after practice. I was very fortunate that Jerry Krause called me up and traded for me. What can say? I’m lucky.

MT: Which former teammates do you still see around the way?
Cartwright: Well, you see guys all the time. A lot of our guys do radio (for NBA teams). Will Perdue does ESPN radio, Scott Williams does some radio. Steve Kerr was on TNT constantly (before taking the Suns GM job). Stacey King does the telecasts for the Bulls. B.J’s (Armstrong) still in Chicago. (Bill) Wennington’s still there, he does the radio for those guys, I see him during the summer.

MT: Do you hear from MJ?
Cartwright: I just saw Michael when we were down south (in Charlotte). He’s wasn't doing anything. Just smoking cigars and looking down from above, watching his team.

MT: How's the greatest player ever doing these days?
Cartwright: He's great. He’s got no worries.

MT: Let's say your Bulls team from the 1992-93 season went against today's San Antonio Spurs. Who wins? Bruce Bowen, Michael Finley and Manu Ginobli have to match up with Jordan and Pippen, while you have to try and contain Tim Duncan. Hmm. Gotta go with the Bulls.
Cartwright: There you go. I can't argue with that. The thing was, we also always had great bench guys. Scott Williams, Stacey King, B.J. Armstrong, Trent Tucker one year, Craig Hodges. We always had five or six guys come off the bench and make contributions, and that now in this league is really rare. Those guys would come in and not only keep the lead but extend it.

MT: People also forget how great those Bulls teams were defensively.
Cartwright: We knew if it was a close game it was our game. If it’s close, it’s ours. We knew we could guard, and that we could score. We also had the advantage of being able to play both ways. If they wanted to run, we could run. If they wanted to slow down, we could slow down.

MT: The Wolves have struggled with closing out games in part due to youth and inexperience, but seem to be turning a corner here.
Cartwright: The Wolves have been playing well lately. It is something that you learn. They’ve got a bunch of young guys. They’ve got some talented, talented guys. Like I said, you need those guys to come off the bench and just do their part.

MT: OK Coach, thanks a lot for the time.
Cartwright: Thank you.